HowieBass

It's supposed to be 230 V here, same as Italy.

It might be worth checking that your guitar cables are good quality too - I recently discovered one I'd used regularly between instrument and my effects console was fitted with poor solderless jack plugs; when I finally swapped it with a much better constructed cable (where I'd actually soldered the plugs on myself and I'm not the world's best at it) the change in sound quality was immediate... volume and tone pots had greater effect. I reckon the crappy solderless plugs and the poor metal to metal junctions were somehow acting as a capacitor...

What was your string tension issue with the MM SUB? Going from roundwounds to flats of the same gauge usually increases tension and reduces compliance. If the rounds on the SUB had too much tension but you liked the sounds then try lighter gauge rounds; if the rounds had too little tension then go for heavier strings? PS: You say "trying out strings is a costly business. Vaguely considering a new amp" but surely a new amp is going to cost ten to twenty times more than a set of new strings?!

Yep, nut height is important and when too high makes fretting at that end of the neck harder than need be, but it has no bearing on fret buzz on anything other than open strings. I check nut slot height by fretting the string at the 3rd and the string should be just shy of touching the 1st fret. Nut slot height is a lot more important with fretless basses where you need the strings to be very close indeed to the fingerboard.

Is the tuning peg ear loose on the shaft or does it just seem that the whole tuning peg feels loose? My very first bass, a Columbus Jazz copy, had tuning peg tensioning collars where you used a little spanner like tool, hooked into a small hole, and tightened up the tuners that way - I see a similar small hole in the photo, on the D string tuner but I assume the other tuning pegs have them too...

These are supposed to be fantastic but they're not cheap http://www.east-uk.com/index.php/bass/j-retro.html http://youtu.be/32j6CI5S0Oo

Bit of info here regarding valve gain factors and possible substitutions for the 12AX7 family http://cydathria.com/fdm/12AX7_sub.html

It sounds like a Cort B4FL - I've got one. It has two Bartolini design humbuckers and a Bartolini design 3 band EQ also featuring an EQ bypass switch. Hardware is Hipshot licenced. It has lots of mid growl and treble on tap even with flatwounds. The necks are very slim, similar to a Jazz thickness and mine is a 5-ply laminate of wenge and rosewood with a thick rosewood fingerboard. I got mine secondhand via eBay for the same as the one you've seen and mine arrived pretty much looking brand new - these go for about £390 new (look here's one for sale http://rguitars.co.uk/collections/cort-guitars/products/b4flopn for more info) and I can honestly say I got a bargain... but, and this might have been a one-off with the instrument I bought, but the bridge was mounted a few millimetres forward of where it needed to be for correct intonation according to the side dot markers (I had the saddle all the way back for the E string and it still wasn't intonating correctly, and the A saddle was probably at the end of its adjustment range too). The bridge on mine was also a bit skewiff (not mounted straight) so I wanted to remount it anyway and I had the confidence to drill new holes and repositioned it without any drama. The instrument now intonates perfectly.

Depending on which factory put your bass together (I believe Cort have made some of the lower end Ibanez models) you can look at the serial number and often the first two digits give the year it was built - I've got four Cort built basses (two Squiers, a Tanglewood and a Cort) and have dated all of them this way.

Nooooooooooo! This doesn't do my GAS any good at all! *groan*

Well that's about 2/3 the price of a new Sterling Ray34 so I reckon it's not a bad deal...

I thought the trouble was over Ric copies and not the real thing. There must be shops/dealers selling secondhand/vintage Rics and openly trading surely? Can't the BC rule be that real Rics are ok, sales of copies not allowed?

I've read that body material has some, but probably less effect on tone than you might imagine and just as important are neck construction (single piece or multi-layer construction and type of wood used, bolt-on or set-in or neck-through design - all of which affect stiffness), choice of pickup, type of tone control, active or passive electronics and string choice and last but not least how you play... So how can you tell if the SR500 will have the sound that you're after? Go for it if you've already heard one played or had your hands on one and like what you hear. If you don't like the EDB500 (too clinical? lacking character?) then you might like to have a complete change of type/manufacturer and I can think of something that will offer you bags of character... a Precision...

A few weeks ago I welcomed my latest addition to the family, a Squier Vintage Modified Precision and, since this is a passive bass and all others in my collection are active, I expected and did see a difference in volume. I could switch from one active bass to another and not need to change the gain setting on my amp but the passive Precision needed a bit of a boost. So far so good. One thing I did notice however, was the fact that the Precision's tone control didn't seem to have much depth to it, some rolling off of treble but not much. I'd previously settled on which cables to run from bass to my Zoom effects unit and from the effects unit to amp, based on those that were quietest and there the story might have ended until the other day when by chance I tried running the Precision straight to the amp using the cable normally between the Zoom effects console and the amp... and the difference was incredible. Not only was the Precision louder but the tone control's range expanded in both directions; better treble when fully open but also much better cut of highs and thicker lows with the tone control closed. I grabbed another bass (a Westone Spectrum LX) and this happens to have both passive and active tone circuits and is switchable between them; again the difference was marked when running in passive mode where output volume increased and tonal range expanded to include better treble and better rolling off of treble. There was obviously something 'bad' about the cable I'd been using between instrument and the Zoom unit. So, I then started checking a few things because I realised that impedance and capacitance matter when it comes to passive tone circuits. I couldn't measure the capacitance of my cables but I did measure that the resistance was about 20 ohm for the offending 20ft cable and about 2 ohm for my other similar length 'good' cables and AFAIK that's not enough to make much/any difference. That left me with capacitance... and the offending cable did have some 'clever' solderless plugs which I'd always wondered about (in terms of how good is the connection with the plugs employing a central spike to make contact with the 'hot' central wire). I did have an old cable with poor screening that has solder free plugs at each end (of a different, old-fashioned design, with connections made via small screw terminals) so I decided to use these at each end of the 'bad' cable to see what difference they'd make and suddenly the cable went from bad to good... the cable resistance also dropped from 20 to 2 ohm but I suspect what really changed was cable capacitance, in that the new-fangled design solderless plugs offered a poor metal to metal connection and I'd introduced, what was, in effect, another capacitor to my bass's passive tone circuit. So there we have it, I'd finally proved that old audiophile myth that some cables are vastly better than others... well that some solderless plugs are better than others... Another outcome of this is that the Squier Vintage Modified Precision actually has a hotter output than my active basses! A win-win situation!

Probably worth leaving the neck for another few days to see what happens to it - it might still have a little way to go.

Well the reason would be he claims to be living in Rochdale but the same bass (photo, instrument history and serial number details) is listed elsewhere and is located in Long Island New York [url="http://fenderbass.net/fender-precision-bass-1959-2/14631"]http://fenderbass.ne...ss-1959-2/14631[/url] plus he's listed on a scam alert website listing some other item and claims to be in Chesterfield? [url="http://ebayscamhunter.blogspot.co.uk/"]http://ebayscamhunter.blogspot.co.uk/[/url] EDIT: And the listing has disappeared! Good work chaps!

If the vinyl is hanging off but looks like it could be stuck back down then you might be able to rework the adhesive using gentle heat (like a hairdryer) - I saw a video tour of the Marshall factory (it's somewhere on YouTube) and the glue they use there is heat activated and the guy in charge mentioned the hairdryer trick.

Is anyone going to report this to eBay to stop him scamming some poor unsuspecting soul?

Tightening the truss rod, by turning the adjusting nut clockwise, creates a back bow in the neck (remember the rule, righty tighty, lefty loosey). You don't want a back bow, you need to loosen the truss rod, allowing the string tension to pull the neck slightly forwards creating the slight relief needed. Do it a little at a time, say a quarter turn a day - a little goes a long way. To check the relief, hold the E string down at the 1st and 12th frets and there should be a very slight gap between string and the 4th through to the 8th frets.

Don Caballero, discovered only after I'd been listening to Battles http://youtu.be/BDzSp5MABl4

I've always liked the way The Hives look http://youtu.be/Uz1Jwyxd4tE

On the subject of small valve amps, and not wishing to hijack the thread, but I keep wondering if I should move on my WEM Westminster 15 that I've owned from new from back in the late 70s. It's not been used in years and it's in pretty much perfect condition and I have the WEM branded vinyl cover for it as well but I notice a buzzing hum from about half volume and upwards (so that's from about 4 and above; yes, it only goes up to 8 on all the controls) and this is even when nothing's plugged into it. Needs new smoothing capacitors maybe?

Anything with Mick Karn playing, such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6G_hugwG0E

Pretty certain it stays high after the slide up. This is supposed to be the isolated track: [media]http://youtu.be/VQHLYKATFyc[/media] and here's Paul with what you might call a roadworn bass: [media]http://youtu.be/1cZzYSgFAlY[/media] A friend of mine owns one of his paintings EDIT: Ahhh you mean the verse not the intro. Yep it's the way you're saying.

I feel sad for the bit of wood that gets covered by the bridge